The Worst ‘Worst’ list of the year. So far.

As mentioned earlier, journalists get lazy in December. Government effectively shuts down, sources go on vacation and things start winding down as the holiday’s approach. If it weren’t for holiday college basketball tournaments, horrific house fires and tear-jerkers about families suffering at Christmas, there would be no news.

But, there are still column inches and on-air minutes to fill, so reporters start cranking out retrospective stories and long lists of the events of the year, the decade, or the era.

“Weird Science” on this list. After all, it’s a 1980s film directed by

John Hughes, which has a certain cachet. It has Bill Paxton as

obnoxious older brother Chet. And I even watched the TV show based on

the movie when it was on years ago. But, really, two teen-aged boys using a computer to create the ideal babe? “Maybe

computers still seemed somewhat magical back in 1985,” Perkowitz says.

“[It’s] the only way to explain how two dateless teen-aged boys,

desperately trying to program a computer simulation of a woman, end up

with Lisa, a living, breathing and totally beautiful creation with

supernatural powers.”

Is this some sort of cruel joke? Well, if so, it ain’t funny. Is CNN trying to say that all of those 1950s xenophobic, Cold War, communist-metaphor

sci-fi movies of the 50s didn’t suck and don’t make the list? And the 1902 crapfest A Trip to the Moon, in which a rocket pokes the Man in the Moon in his eye, doesn’t make the list? But Weird Science is bad?

The very next paragraph, thankfully, reveals the truth: CNN put it on the list, but realizes it didn’t need to go there. This reeks of a reporter pulling something out of their desk drawer on deadline.